CEO @ Accelevents | Event Marketing, Management, and Growth

Events are hard enough. At Accelevents, we're on a mission to help event organizers get some sleep the night before their event.

Jonathan Kazarian

Event Strategy vs. Event Plan

An EVENT PLAN is:
1. Your event timeline and schedule
2. Venue logistics and vendor coordination
3. Session topics and speaker lineup
4. Event formats (workshops, panels, networking sessions, etc.)
5. The checklist that keeps you on time and on budget.

Nail the plan and you execute.
Your event strategy will never work if you can’t execute.

An EVENT STRATEGY is:
1. Purpose - why the event program matters to the business and the audience.
2. Audience journey - who you invite, where they sit in the funnel, how you’ll move them forward.
3. Behavior change - the trust, loyalty, or pipeline progression you expect after the show.
4. Core formats - the few repeatable experiences your brand builds a reputation on for (flagship, field, virtual).
5. Measurement - attendee lift, downstream revenue, partner amplification. Probably can’t do this without Marketing Ops.
6. Tool fit - You need a partner, not duct tape. Your event tech should be an enabler.
7. Team cadence - sales, product, brand, and ops aligned from brief to debrief.

Your event program is ultimately a form of PR.
It will share you perception in the market.
And that’s how it should be approached.

When we onboard new customers.
They always fall in 1 of 2 camps.

Either:
Show me how to build out my next event.
OR
Teach me how to roll this out across my company.

The “event strategy” led teams always focus on the latter.
They know they can run the event.
What they care about is how they can scale the program.

**Note** you need management to buy into the strategy.
You need a C-suite that understands the compounding impact of a strategic event program.

When events are reduced to lead quotas, quality erodes.
Trust erodes.
Brand equity erodes.
Strategy prevents that slide.

Do you feel like you’re given room to execute an event strategy?
Or are you being tasked with ‘random acts’ of event planning?

CEO @ Accelevents - Event Management Software| Event Marketing | MarTech

CEO @ Rockway | Helping you grow pipeline, build brand awareness and hit objectives at your tradeshows and events

At Rockway Exhibits + Events, we help our clients grow pipeline, build brand awareness, and hit objectives at their tradeshows and events. We specifically deliver on; strategy, design, project management, fabrication and logistical support. All in an effort to ensure our clients event marketing success by producing strategic and intentional tradeshow booths, corporate event buildouts, and brand activations. 

We are passionate about bringing ideas to life, building trusting relationships internally and externally, and designing brand experiences that drive results for our clients.  

Rockway Core Values:
- It takes a village
- We do what we say we are going to do
- Creative minded
- The details matter
- We give a shit

What I personally enjoy talking about and working on:
- Tradeshow strategy and execution
- Corporate events
- Concepting experiential engagements and brand activations 
- Leadership
- Cultivating change in people and organizations
- EQ

Matt Kleinrock

It's not a tradeshow "booth." It's not an "exhibit." Its a brand activation. Let me explain why and why this matters. 


Best definition I could find for "booth." 
-  Small temporary tent or structure at a market, fair, or exhibition, used for selling goods, providing information, or staging shows.

Best definition I could find for "exhibit." 
- Publicly display (a work of art or item of interest) in an art gallery or museum or at a trade fair.

Best definition I could find for "brand activation."
- A marketing strategy that brings a brand to life through interactive, immersive experiences, driving consumer engagement, brand awareness, and loyalty. Encouraging active participation, fostering emotional connections and memorable moments. 

Tony Robbins talks about language and the words we use all the time. He harps on their importance and how they shape the way we think and behave. Many/most companies are still treating their tradeshows like large "markets" ... set up your shit, send your sales people, and sell.  

Tradeshows started as a marketplace to come together, so people can sell their stuff and see people they normally wouldn't see or know existed. But its 2026. Times have changed. 

Tradeshows are now far more complex than that and have shifted quite a bit. 

Tradeshows still get an entire industry in one place for 2-4 days, which always has and always will be the biggest value and draw of it. Its a networking super haven. 

But the way people buy has changed and with technology, the way companies sell and market has changed. Touchpoints are abundant, and you can find/target anyone. Tradeshows are a touchpoint in your customers journey, but a major one, a catalyst. 

A catalyst type touchpoint where you can impress, build genuine brand awareness, strengthen relationships, and quickly further/accelerate customer and prospect journeys with you. 

This all sets the stage for the way exhibitors should be thinking about their brand activation at the tradeshow. 

Stop selling at people and start delivering them experience and value.

CEO @ Rockway | Redefining exhibits + events that connect, convert, and power business results.

I’m thrilled to announce that after 15 years in the business,



That tradeshows and events are now more than ever, solidified and being treated as a major customer touchpoint in GTM, sales, marketing and the customer journey. 

Why? 

Because face to face in person is a catalyst type touch point. 

It has a way of accelerating relationships, building trust faster, and deepening understanding of product, service, brand and people. 

This means, you can “move” your audience/customer. You can move them closer to you with every interaction. 

Call this pipeline influence, pipeline impact, whatever you want. 

At the right tradeshow or event, with the right intentional strategy you can…

✅ Build awareness and affirmation for your brand for people who don’t know you or don’t know much about you. 

✅ Turn window shoppers into interested prospects and get on their list. 

✅ Turn current customers into better customers or super fans.

✅ Accelerate current opps/deals faster to close.

✅ Regain old customers interest and trust back. 

✅ Turn interested prospects into opportunities. 

✅Find and solidify new partnerships/distributors/ referral sources 

Honestly the list goes on and on. 

Tradeshows and events do and can affect every part of your customers journey and contribute to sales and marketing goals. 

Be intentional. Be strategic. Align to revenue goals. And above all, deliver experience and value to your audience and customer.

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Companies that are NOT driving revenue and influencing pipeline while exhibiting, are burning 💰 , wasting ⏲️ , and draining resources. 


Exhibiting can no longer be treated as one off events, where companies get a nice booth, that meets their needs, for the best price, and show up. 

Exhibiting is a strategic touchpoint for GTM, sales and marketing. This means there must be heavy alignment to revenue goals. 

It also means the approach must be intentional, and the strategy must revolve around engaging your customer, prospect, partners, in a creative, relevant and value driven manner. 

I am excited to be speaking again at Exhibitor Live this year in Tampa with our VP of Sales + Marketing Coty K Adams.  If you are going to Exhibitor Live and take our class, here is what you can expect to learn...

✅ We are going to to teach you how to turn your tradeshow program into a  true sales and marketing partner and revenue channel. 

✅ Proven strategies to accelerate pipeline. 

✅ Tactics to engage your audience in ways that moves them closer to you.

✅ Pre show and post show "Must do's" if you want to have success. 

✅ How to develop creative "offers" that drive traffic and help book meetings. 

✅ Different approaches for different types of audience you exhibit in front of; influencers, decision makers, referral partners, distributors. 

✅ A unique approach to exhibit design and why the old was sucks.

See you in Tampa!

3 years, 31,000 downloads, 175 total episodes, 65 live shows, dozens of "at the event" episodes, countless LinkedIn messages from listeners, a place for corp event marketers to learn, gain affirmation, and support one another. 



Rockway Exhibits + Events podcast, Event Marketing Redefined, has truly been both a heavy lift and absolute joy to work on the last 3 years. 

I personally have learned more than I thought I ever could, and it has helped me connect the dots on complex topics to better support our customers and better grow Rockway. 

Corporate event marketers and industry experts are filled with tried and true experience, deep knowledge and a passion for tradeshows and events. 

The podcast set out to drive important conversations around tradeshows and events, and to give corporate event marketers a place to develop themselves on their own time. It has turned into a lot more than that...

✅ We have helped "out of work" event marketers get jobs.
✅ We have done meaningful work and helped corporate event marketers solve problems and produce results. 
✅ Event marketers have found peer community through our live show, podcast and yearly host event, with support, affirmation, learning and great people to lean on. 
✅ Event marketers have hired and found each other jobs via our community. 
✅ We have helped event marketers get promotions and raises. 

The list goes on but what an experience. I am both pleased and genuinely shocked how many people listen to our podcast. 

Something else I am particularly proud of is, we have been an industry leader in driving important conversations and narratives around tradeshows and events. 

In particular, discussions and narratives around 1. Getting event marketers a seat at the table for business alignment. 2. Producing real results and pipeline via events. 3. Strategy and Intentionality vs. planning and execution. 

Moving into 26' we have some big goals and some intentional changes. 

✅ We're taking the show on the road more. 
✅ Creating more in depth and niche topic shows.
✅ Create two live shows monthly that people love to be at, taking us from avg 40 attendees to 60+ avg attendees. 
✅ Improve production quality. 
✅ Keep leveling up corporate event marketers

Tradeshow and event survey data is clearly telling us that the audience expects more, when they show up to your event, exhibit space, or activation. 



Audience expectations have risen. Period. Audiences are surveying, judging, and looking for better experiences. How a brand shows up is a major part of how they are viewed by their audience. 

Better experiences have many angles and parts to them but overall they are intentional and strategic. 

The age old conversation is that tradeshows and events are $$$$$. They are, but two opposing thoughts can be true at the same time. Because at the same time, tradeshows and events are a highly effective sales and marketing channel 

For many companies, tradeshows and events are an expensive, yet fruitful endeavor. BUT only when executed correctly. 

Here are some things I believe you must do, based on the above...

1. Show up and show out. Simply showing up and running the same old same old is going noticed. It looks lazy and insinuates a lazy brand. 

Creativity, ideas and engagement are at a premium and a big differentiator. 


2. Heavily factor the fact that audiences want to learn, network, and solve problems they are facing while at tradeshows and events. Don't waste their time. 

You are not there to sell them. You are there to engage and deliver for them. The touchpoint is typically a touchpoint that if done right, will progress them in their buyer/customer journey with you. 

3. A well thought out cohesive plan that your entire team is in step with. 

How you interact human 2 human and how your people engage your audience accelerates a great exhibit, event, plan, etc.

If you are paying $100,000 for a tradeshow booth, then you would be wise to pay $10,000 for an integrated strategy first.


I have seen exhibit design/build/service requests come in to my company for 15 years now. Formal RFP's, website submissions, emails, etc, and they are all missing one thing to max effectiveness. 

Put simply, STRATEGY, they are all missing a request or key ask for strategy... "How do we do this effectively and hit our goals?" I will break it down and what I think requests should be asking for. 

1. Designing, building, logistics, support, storage, is 101. Its a given. Every mom and pop shop in the country can do this themself or outsource it to someone who can to get the job done. Whether they do a good job or not, that's another story with many variables.

2. Some companies ask for ideas, engagement, or tech. Love this part and believe its completely necessary. But ideas, engagement and tech without an intentional aligned strategy is just novelty.  

Here is the truth. 

Your tradeshow is a pivotal and catalyst type touchpoint for your customers, prospects, partners, distributors, and overall relationships. Its a touchpoint where you can heavily influence them and move them along in their customer journey. This equates to pipeline and pipeline equates to revenue.

Exhibiting costs a lot of 💰. Its expensive, time consuming, and resource consuming. 

Given these two things, and in order to make exhibiting worth our while, we need to be intentional, strategic, and be diligent about driving company goals. 

A nice looking exhibit, good logistics, and good support doesn't cut it. Its only one piece of the equation. 

And...  a nice looking exhibit doesn't mean its an exhibit that performs at a high level; driving experience, value, emotion, customer engagement, and storytelling. 

So what should you be asking of your tradeshow partner?

- How can we drive more leads at our tradeshows?
- How do we ensure we create enough pipeline impact? 
- How can we deliver our audiences a better experience, and a experience that makes them then want to ________?
- How do we ensure that this exhibit process with you will result in achieving our 3 main goals? 
- What do we need to do pre and post show that ties into our on the floor exhibit and execution? 
- How can we tie a big idea, message or narrative to our entire tradeshow experience? 
- How can we get the audience we engage with to believe that we are _________?" 


I know tradeshows have a lot of moving parts and can be a nightmare logistically that everyone worries about. 

But this cannot be the focus and this cannot be the only thing you ask of your partner. 

Start asking for high level intentional strategy so you can achieve company goals and contribute to the sales and marketing directives. The rest should follow.

This is how high performing event teams turn 3 days on the trade show floor into revenue and 6-12 months of pipeline impact.


No matter how you cut it, exhibiting and sponsoring at tradeshows and events is about growing revenue and driving pipeline impact, movement, activity. 

With that being said, this means INTENTIONAL STRATEGY is an absolute must. 

Here is how you grow revenue and drive pipeline forward. 

1. Pre show hustle. 100 ways to skin this cat, but you need to aggressively book meetings, appts, and fill up your engagements. Not doing this is a killer for results. 

2. Swift and personalized post show follow up. Pre meditated and mapped out plan for post show follow up is the secret sauce. 

3. Create a compelling offer. Give people a reason to say yes and to show up. Great offers usually consist of some type of activation or engagement + value + giveaway. If your offer is shit, you will struggle to get people to show up. MVP: Memorable, Valuable, Personalized. 

4. Staff plan, scripts and event execution alignment. Boots on the ground need to understand what we are trying to accomplish, what the message is, and how the experience works. 

5. One clear measurable goal that sales, marketing, events, and execs are aligned on. This one is tough, but clarity creates focus, and focus drives results. Serving 10 goals and 4 depts leads to average results. 

6. Face to face expedites trust in B2B, and people buy from people and companies they know, like and trust. Relational > Transactional. 

7. The data shows that attendees of events are attending to; learn, solve their problems, and interact with their peers. If you are not facilitating or delivering any of the 3, you have a problem. 

8. Exhibit design is all about eliciting emotion from attendee, mapping experience/behavior, and creative story telling. Not aesthetics and vanity. How do you get someone to Stop -> Engage -> Qualify -> Influence.

9. Strategy cheat code: What matters most to your audience and what is relevant in their world? 

10. Efficient and systematic lead tracking and documenting. The tradeshow floor works fast. You see prospects, customers, old customers, partners, referral opps, etc. Don't let good moments die. A really good "on the floor" qualification process is a major part of doing this well. 

11. Leverage data for better decisions. Data can come in the form of surveys, technology cameras, engagements, self data entry, etc. Qualitative and quantitative decision making is key. Qualitative is easy, do the work for the quantitative. 

12. Guerilla marketing... Guerrilla marketing is an unconventional, low-cost advertising strategy that uses surprise and creativity in public spaces to create buzz and make a strong, memorable impression, often by leveraging ambient environments or interactive stunts to engage people directly, generating word-of-mouth and social media shares. 

13. Heavy alignment with sales and alignment to revenue goals.

Leveraging partnerships, scaling through events, hiring talent & expertise, Sponsoring FIFA World Cup, this weeks live Event Marketing Redefined show is packed.


This week I am excited to have on two very talented event marketers who are no stranger to our Event Marketing Redefined podcast, live show, and community. Jon Wolff and Mandy Glenwright. 

Jon recently hired Mandy to be a part of his team at Lenovo, adding some serious experience and expertise to their team. 

We’re going deep on what’s working right now, as Lenovo leans into long term strategic partner-led events and one of the biggest stages in the world: their FIFA World Cup sponsorship.

A few questions we’ll unpack live:
✅ What does bringing in leaders with deep events expertise enable for a global team—and how does that tighten alignment between strategy and execution?

✅ How does Lenovo approach partnerships as a long-term strategic lever and not a one-off collaboration?

✅ When partnerships work at scale, what qualities show up consistently in the collaboration itself?

✅ Why do so many partnerships default to logo placement? And what separates the ones that feel genuinely collaborative?

✅ When you have scale (like FIFA)… How do you translate it into relevance and choose activations that actually make sense?

Join us this Wednesday, January 21st at 1PM EST. Register in the comments.

Faherty Brand is now a 250m clothing brand. After their initial launch in 2013 and a lull in sales, guess what they did? 


They decided to hit the road. 

They built a trailer, and toured the country, concerts, festivals, surf locations, outdoor activity type stuff, and niched into specialty local clothing stores. 

They then parlayed that trailer into a tradeshow booth to hit a certain circuit of tradeshows in 2014. 

With little money, a new and unproven clothing brand, and in the day and age of digital marketing, why did they do this? 

Because face to face, in person, look, touch, feel, and having the ability to tell your story in person matters. 

Its powerful, and from a business standpoint, simply because, people buy from who they know, like, trust, as well as companies and people who feel authentic.  

That makes me think of a quote I love. "Presence is the highest form of authenticity." - Jefferson Fisher (Read his book if you haven't) 

Companies spend 20-30% of their total marketing budgets on tradeshows and events. That's a lot of dough 💰 . They do this because, they want pipeline, customer retention, sales, partnerships, and overall they want brand awareness, which to me is moving people closer to your brand via every interaction. 

Yet so many companies half ass their events. Same playbook every year, little to no strategy, minimal surprise and delight moments for their audience, understaffed event dept, and too many events with too little intentionality. 

Tradeshows and events are a major growth lever for companies. They are a significant and catalyzing touchpoint in their customers journey. 

Be intentional, be strategic, be customer centric, and above all, represent the brand/company to its most authentic true self.

I keep seeing teams spend a lot of money to show up at tradeshows, and then act surprised when the booth underperforms.


Not because the booth was bad. Not because the show was wrong. But because the REAL WORK never happened.

Pre-show isn’t a checklist item. It’s the strategy.

- The targeting
- The conversations you start before you ever arrive
- The clarity around who you actually want to meet and why

That’s why this case study stood out to me.

Jonathan Kazarian and Michael Burns at Accelevents didn’t stumble into 116 meetings from a 10×10 booth at IMEX. They treated the event like a go-to-market motion, not a moment in time.

- Community-first thinking
- Intentional outbound
- Sales and marketing aligned before the doors opened

Booth size didn’t drive the outcome. Preparation did.

We’re breaking this down live on Wednesday, Feb 4 at 1 PM ET. Not as a highlight reel, but as a practical look at what actually moved the needle and what they’d do differently next time.

Link to register in the comments.

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The Battle

Jonathan Kazarian

Matt Kleinrock

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The Battle

Jonathan Kazarian

Matt Kleinrock

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jonathan Kazarian's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreJonathan Kazarian's LinkedIn Performance